Effect of Entrepreneurial Skills Management and Funding on Small and Medium Enterprises’ Performances at the Local Government Level in Northern Nigeria

This paper reports a study undertaken to determine the effect of entrepreneurial skills management (ESM) and funding on small and medium enterprises’ performances at the local government level in northern Nigeria. The descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. A researcher designed questionnaire was administered to a random sample of 300 SMEs was from the manufacturing sector in three states of Northern Nigeria to gather data bothering on demographic and organizational characteristics of respondents and their SMEs respectively, ESM abilities of respondents and on funding aspects that has effect on the performance of SMEs. In determining the instrument’s reliability estimate, a cronbach alpha of 0.81 was obtained. The study found that though both ESM and funding have significant influence on the performances of SMEs, the influence ESM accounts for 39.0% while that of funding accounts for 42.8% of the variations in the performances of SMEs. From the findings of this study and similar others, it was therefore concluded that ESM and funding are key drivers of SMEs’ performance in northern Nigeria. Both factors may therefore be considered as the fulcrum that can be used to propel SMEs performances in this region.